Wizard of the Crow

The Wizard of the Crow got out and ran, even as the mkokoteni sped off. When the Mercedes-Benz finally crossed the rails, Kaniuru just spotted the mkokoteni in the distance. Go get it, he told the chauffeur.

25

It was later said that a donkey had stood in the middle of the road, impeding traffic until the Limping Witch and the Wizard of the Crow had safely fled. But other rumors said no, all the donkeys of Santa-maria had lined up and down the road, defecating and urinating, making it so slippery that vehicles could hardly move, and when the police tried to pursue the two they slid all over the place and eventually resorted to commandeering whatever bicycles were to be had.

“Was that true?” Vinjinia asked her husband, Tajirika, the evening of the following day.

“Leave rumors to rumormongers,” Tajirika said irritably, for he was not happy about the news that the Limping Witch and the Wizard of the Crow had escaped. His evolving monetary policy involved the production of foreign currency, naturally grown dollars, and it all depended on the Wizard of the Crow doing the will of the Buler. He feared that the wizard’s flight might put his governorship of the Central Bank at risk.

Vinjinia was a little crestfallen: so the news of the escape of the Wizard of the Crow was just rumor r

“The bit about his escape is true,” Tajirika said. “But he was helped by the Limping Witch, not asses, whether one or many”

“A limping what?”

“One of the sorcerers. The sorcerer’s left leg was shorter than the right, and so the nickname,” Tajirika explained, and then paused. “Vinjinia, your suggestion that we openly advertise for witches and sorcerers to come for a national achievement test at the State House was brilliant. It would have almost certainly borne fruit but for the Limping Witch.”

“A man?”

“No! A woman, and she and the wizard have vanished!”

“How is that possible? I mean, their escape?”

“I can only tell you what I heard Kaniuru teil the Ruler when accusing the guards of negligence, asserting their unfitness to wear the uniform of loyal officers. But you know that the nosy one is a liar and with him it is difficult to tell fact from fiction.”

“How does Kaniuru come into this?” Vinjinia asked, genuinely puzzled.

Even though he was tired, Tajirika managed to recap the story.

That the Limping Witch had escaped made Vinjinia happy, for she was most likely one of the women who had helped her in her time of need. She was also pleased with herself for having rejected the temptation to betray Nyawlra. But what made her even happier was knowing that she was in solidarity with people she had once thought evil, people who, despite her disagreement with their politics, she now saw as humane and generous at heart. She certainly preferred them to the beastly and mean-spirited Kaniurus of Aburlria. Now she was elated at having worked out, all her own idea, how best to thank Nyawlra.

She went over what she had done. She had gleaned all the information about the condition and whereabouts of the Wizard of the Crow from Tajirika during shared meals and pillow talk, and had imparted it to Maritha.

It was Vinjinia who told Maritha that the Wizard of the Crow was captured in a bar and that he had contracted the malady of words after being hauled to the State House. It seemed to her, she told Maritha, that it was only the males of the species who were susceptible to the disease. She told her about the national sorcery achievement test and that its object was to cure the wizard. Vinjinia did not once hint to Maritha what she was to do with the information, for she of course knew that Maritha would relay every bit of it to Nyawlra. Yet she had not foreseen the escape. She had simply intended to put Nyawlra in touch with the Wizard of the Crow. Her machinations, it seemed, had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.

Still, she was irked that Kaniuru had somehow managed to insert himself into the events, and in this she and her husband were in complete agreement.

“Can you believe that despite his interference in matters that did not concern him and his failure to capture the runaway mkokoteni, Kaniuru has been entrusted by the Ruler to bring in the fugitives?”

“That man! I don’t know what it will take to stop him from benefiting from his evil ways,” Vinjinia said. “What about the three policemen? How did they explain their behavior?”

“A.G., Kahiga, and Njoya have joined the ranks of the jobless,” Tajirika said.

The news gnawed at her. “How could the Ruler dismiss the three who had served him so loyally?”

“The Ruler is never wrong,” Tajirika hastened to say. “I am sure he would not have dismissed the officers without good reason.”

26

“True, Haki ya Mungu, when we went back to the State House we found that Kaniuru had already poisoned the atmosphere with lies. He even claimed that he found us surrounded by tourists with cameras clicking away at the sight of policemen riding a donkey cart, a scene that gave the impression that the Ruler was so broke he could only afford carts for his police force!

“They dismissed us from our jobs and told us to get out of government housing immediately. Stray dogs, even when they have snatched something, are treated more kindly by passersby than we were treated by those we had faithfully served all our lives.

“I don’t know about the other two, but I had no land or house or any property that I could call my own. In discussing the options before us, we realized, too late, that we had no skills other than those of arresting, torturing, and taking people to court. The only jobs that offered possibilities were the private security firms that were mushrooming throughout the country. With the much-flaunted IMF-brokered prosperity confined to a few, the houses of the rich had become luxurious prisons. But imagine the shame of two ex-superintendents and one ex- assistant police commissioner reduced to guarding people’s houses with a terrier’s leash in one hand and a knock- berry club in the other! Or simply armed with bows and arrows?

“We sat down by the roadside near the same railway crossing, wondering why fate had dealt us such a blow. Where are we to gor Why has good fortune abandoned us when we most need it? Who was this Limping Witch?” Kahiga moaned.

The Limping Witch and the Wizard of the Crow are one and the same, a worn-down A.G. told Njoya and Kahiga solemnly. A disagreement erupted among them, Kahiga and Njoya maintaining that the Limping Witch and the Wizard of the Crow were different and distinct entities. A.C. tried to explain that there were times when the wizard appeared as female and other times as male. The Limping Witch is the other face of the wizard, and the captive was simply his shadow. He told them of the night he had chased two human-shaped apparitions in the prairie but that when they jumped over the rock cleft as two-”You remember the rock and the bush where we saw the plants with the dollar-shaped leaves?”-they became one person…

No sooner were the dollar-shaped leaves mentioned than Kahiga snapped to attention. “I say, let us go and look for the Wizard of the Crow, be he the Limping Witch or not, a woman or not, a shadow or not,” he said excitedly.

What? After what the Ruler has done to us?” asked A.C., surprised by his own critical tone.

“Yes, a donkey expresses gratitude by its kicks,” Njoya observed.

“There, you have said it,” Kahiga said. “Remember the holes we dug night and day in the prairie? Did we ever get anything for our effort? We don’t even know what they did with the plants. And now this? Dismissals based on brazen lies! No. We are going to look for the Wizard of the Crow, all right, but this time for ourselves. See? We tell him about our jobless misery. We will pray to him to tell us the secret of growing money on trees. We don’t need to know about the dollar-producing type. For us a Burl-producing plant will do,” Kahiga noted as the other two nodded